We prove that Y_6 is a spanner. Y_6 is the Yao graph on a set of planar points, which has an edge from each point x to a closest point y within each of the six angular cones of 60 deg surrounding x.
It is a long standing open problem whether Yao-Yao graphs $\mathsf{YY}_{k}$ are all spanners [li2002sparse]. Bauer and Damian [bauer2013infinite] showed that all $\mathsf{YY}_{6k}$ for $k \geq 6$ are spanners. Li and Zhan [li2016almost] generalized their result and proved that all even Yao-Yao graphs $\mathsf{YY}_{2k}$ are spanners (for $k\geq 42$). However, their technique cannot be extended to odd Yao-Yao graphs, and whether they are spanners are still elusive. In this paper, we show that, surprisingly, for any integer $k \geq 1$, there exist odd Yao-Yao graph $\mathsf{YY}_{2k+1}$ instances,…
We show that, unlike the Yao-Yao graph $YY_6$, the Theta-Theta graph $ΘΘ_6$ defined by six cones is a spanner for sets of points in convex position. We also show that, for sets of points in non-convex position, the spanning ratio of $ΘΘ_6$ is unbounded.
A unit disk graph $G$ on a given set $P$ of points in the plane is a geometric graph where an edge exists between two points $p,q \in P$ if and only if $|pq| \leq 1$. A spanning subgraph $G'$ of $G$ is a $k$-hop spanner if and only if for every edge $pq\in G$, there is a path between $p,q$ in $G'$ with at most $k$ edges. We obtain the following results for unit disk graphs in the plane. (I) Every $n$-vertex unit disk graph has a $5$-hop spanner with at most $5.5n$ edges. We analyze the family of spanners constructed by Biniaz (2020) and improve the upper bound on the number of edges from $9n$ …
In SoCG 2022, Conroy and Tóth presented several constructions of sparse, low-hop spanners in geometric intersection graphs, including an $O(n\log n)$-size 3-hop spanner for $n$ disks (or fat convex objects) in the plane, and an $O(n\log^2 n)$-size 3-hop spanner for $n$ axis-aligned rectangles in the plane. Their work left open two major questions: (i) can the size be made closer to linear by allowing larger constant stretch? and (ii) can near-linear size be achieved for more general classes of intersection graphs? We address both questions simultaneously, by presenting new constructions of con…
Yao graphs are geometric spanners that connect each point of a given point set to its nearest neighbor in each of $k$ cones drawn around it. Yao graphs were introduced to construct minimum spanning trees in $d$ dimensional spaces. Moreover, they are used for instance in topology control in wireless networks. An optimal \Onlogn time algorithm to construct Yao graphs for given point set has been proposed in the literature but -- to the best of our knowledge -- never been implemented. Instead, algorithms with a quadratic complexity are used in popular packages to construct these graphs. In this p…
Let $(X,\mathbf{d})$ be a metric space, $V\subseteq X$ a finite set, and $E \subseteq V \times V$. We call the graph $G(E,V)$ a {\em metric} graph if each edge $(u,v) \in E$ has weight $d(u,v)$. In particular edge $(u,u)$ is in the graph and have distance $0$. We call $G$ a {\em proximal navigation graph} or $PN$-graph if for each edge $(u,v) \in E$ either $u=v$ or there is a node $u_1$ such that $(u,u_1) \in E$ and $\mathbf{d}(u,v) > \mathbf{d}(u_1,v)$. In such graph it is possible to navigate greedily from an arbitrary source node to an arbitrary target node by reducing the distance between …
For a set of points in the plane and a fixed integer $k > 0$, the Yao graph $Y_k$ partitions the space around each point into $k$ equiangular cones of angle $θ=2π/k$, and connects each point to a nearest neighbor in each cone. It is known for all Yao graphs, with the sole exception of $Y_5$, whether or not they are geometric spanners. In this paper we close this gap by showing that for odd $k \geq 5$, the spanning ratio of $Y_k$ is at most $1/(1-2\sin(3θ/8))$, which gives the first constant upper bound for $Y_5$, and is an improvement over the previous bound of $1/(1-2\sin(θ/2))$ for odd $k \g…
We present improved upper bounds on the spanning ratio of constrained $θ$-graphs with at least 6 cones and constrained Yao-graphs with 5 or at least 7 cones. Given a set of points in the plane, a Yao-graph partitions the plane around each vertex into $m$ disjoint cones, each having aperture $θ= 2 π/m$, and adds an edge to the closest vertex in each cone. Constrained Yao-graphs have the additional property that no edge properly intersects any of the given line segment constraints. Constrained $θ$-graphs are similar to constrained Yao-graphs, but use a different method to determine the closest v…
The unit disk graph (UDG) is a widely employed model for the study of wireless networks. In this model, wireless nodes are represented by points in the plane and there is an edge between two points if and only if their Euclidean distance is at most one. A hop spanner for the UDG is a spanning subgraph $H$ such that for every edge $(p,q)$ in the UDG the topological shortest path between $p$ and $q$ in $H$ has a constant number of edges. The hop stretch factor of $H$ is the maximum number of edges of these paths. A hop spanner is plane (i.e. embedded planar) if its edges do not cross each other.…
$t$-spanners are used to approximate the pairwise distances between a set of points in a metric space. They have only a few edges compared to the total number of pairs and they provide a $t$-approximation on the distance of any two arbitrary points. There are many ways to construct such graphs and one of the most efficient ones, in terms of weight and the number of edges of the resulting graph, is the greedy spanner. In this paper, we study the edge crossings of the greedy spanner for points in the Euclidean plane. We prove a constant upper bound for the number of intersections with larger edg…
An emanation graph of grade $k$ on a set of points is a plane spanner made by shooting $2^{k+1}$ equally spaced rays from each point, where the shorter rays stop the longer ones upon collision. The collision points are the Steiner points of the spanner. Emanation graphs of grade one were studied by Mondal and Nachmanson in the context of network visualization. They proved that the spanning ratio of such a graph is bounded by $(2+\sqrt{2})\approx 3.414$. We improve this upper bound to $\sqrt{10} \approx 3.162$ and show this to be tight, i.e., there exist emanation graphs with spanning ratio $\s…
Let $V$ be a finite set of vertices in the plane and $S$ be a finite set of polygonal obstacles, where the vertices of $S$ are in $V$. We show how to construct a plane $2$-spanner of the visibility graph of $V$ with respect to $S$. As this graph can have unbounded degree, we modify it in three easy-to-follow steps, in order to bound the degree to $7$ at the cost of slightly increasing the spanning ratio to 6.
Let $P$ be a finite set of points in the plane and $S$ a set of non-crossing line segments with endpoints in $P$. The visibility graph of $P$ with respect to $S$, denoted $Vis(P,S)$, has vertex set $P$ and an edge for each pair of vertices $u,v$ in $P$ for which no line segment of $S$ properly intersects $uv$. We show that the constrained half-$θ_6$-graph (which is identical to the constrained Delaunay graph whose empty visible region is an equilateral triangle) is a plane 2-spanner of $Vis(P,S)$. We then show how to construct a plane 6-spanner of $Vis(P,S)$ with maximum degree $6+c$, where $c…
We look at generalized Delaunay graphs in the constrained setting by introducing line segments which the edges of the graph are not allowed to cross. Given an arbitrary convex shape $C$, a constrained Delaunay graph is constructed by adding an edge between two vertices $p$ and $q$ if and only if there exists a homothet of $C$ with $p$ and $q$ on its boundary that does not contain any other vertices visible to $p$ and $q$. We show that, regardless of the convex shape $C$ used to construct the constrained Delaunay graph, there exists a constant $t$ (that depends on $C$) such that it is a plane $…
Let $P \subset \mathbb{R}^2$ be a planar $n$-point set such that each point $p \in P$ has an associated radius $r_p > 0$. The transmission graph $G$ for $P$ is the directed graph with vertex set $P$ such that for any $p, q \in P$, there is an edge from $p$ to $q$ if and only if $d(p, q) \leq r_p$. Let $t > 1$ be a constant. A $t$-spanner for $G$ is a subgraph $H \subseteq G$ with vertex set $P$ so that for any two vertices $p,q \in P$, we have $d_H(p, q) \leq t d_G(p, q)$, where $d_H$ and $d_G$ denote the shortest path distance in $H$ and $G$, respectively (with Euclidean edge lengths). We sho…
For any constants $d\ge 1$, $ε>0$, $t>1$, and any $n$-point set $P\subset\mathbb{R}^d$, we show that there is a geometric graph $G=(P,E)$ having $O(n\log^2 n\log\log n)$ edges with the following property: For any $F\subseteq P$, there exists $F^+\supseteq F$, $|F^+| \le (1+ε)|F|$ such that, for any pair $p,q\in P\setminus F^+$, the graph $G-F$ contains a path from $p$ to $q$ whose (Euclidean) length is at most $t$ times the Euclidean distance between $p$ and $q$. In the terminology of robust spanners (Bose \et al, SICOMP, 42(4):1720--1736, 2013) the graph $G$ is a $(1+ε)k$-robust $t$-spanner o…
$\newcommand{\Emph}[1]{\it{#1}} \newcommand{\FF}{\mathcal{F}}\newcommand{\region}{\mathsf{r}}\newcommand{\restrictY}[2]{#1 \cap {#2}}$For a set of points $P \subseteq \mathbb{R}^2$, and a family of regions $\FF$, a $\Emph{local~t-spanner}$ of $P$, is a sparse graph $G$ over $P$, such that, for any region $\region \in \FF$, the subgraph restricted to $\region$, denoted by $\restrictY{G}{\region} = G_{P \cap \region}$, is a $t$-spanner for all the points of $\region \cap P$. We present algorithms for the construction of local spanners with respect to several families of regions, such as homothet…
A geometric $t$-spanner on a set of points in Euclidean space is a graph containing for every pair of points a path of length at most $t$ times the Euclidean distance between the points. Informally, a spanner is $\mathcal{O}(k)$-robust if deleting $k$ vertices only harms $\mathcal{O}(k)$ other vertices. We show that on any one-dimensional set of $n$ points, for any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists an $\mathcal{O}(k)$-robust $1$-spanner with $\mathcal{O}(n^{1+\varepsilon})$ edges. Previously it was only known that $\mathcal{O}(k)$-robust spanners with $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ edges exists and that there…
A spanner is reliable if it can withstand large, catastrophic failures in the network. More precisely, any failure of some nodes can only cause a small damage in the remaining graph in terms of the dilation, that is, the spanner property is maintained for almost all nodes in the residual graph. Constructions of reliable spanners of near linear size are known in the low-dimensional Euclidean settings. Here, we present new constructions of reliable spanners for planar graphs, trees and (general) metric spaces.
We show how to construct $(1+\varepsilon)$-spanner over a set $P$ of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ that is resilient to a catastrophic failure of nodes. Specifically, for prescribed parameters $\vartheta,\varepsilon \in (0,1)$, the computed spanner $G$ has $ O\bigl(\varepsilon^{-c} \vartheta^{-6} n \log n (\log\log n)^6 \bigr) $ edges, where $c= O(d)$. Furthermore, for any $k$, and any deleted set $B \subseteq P$ of $k$ points, the residual graph $G \setminus B$ is $(1+\varepsilon)$-spanner for all the points of $P$ except for $(1+\vartheta)k$ of them. No previous constructions, beyond the triv…